The experts of SME Development and Trade Committees of the Presidium of the Atameken NCE RK have discussed the issue of upgrading program of non-financial business support under the Roadmap and ways to get business out of the shadow during a joint meeting.

Since 2015 the National Chamber has been the operator of non-financial support of the Business Roadmap-2020 program. 253 thousand services were rendered to SMEs during this time.

The Atameken is represented in all regions and is able to provide support to entrepreneurs operating even in the districts. For example, after opening the district offices the number of entrepreneurs, who took advantage of assistance, increased by 40 per cent in Ust-Kamenogorsk.

According to the chairman of the Trade Committee Kairat Mazhibayev, at the new stage of the program implementation it is necessary to determine the roles of all participants - implementers, and take a course on modernization, namely, to transfer part of the functions to business environment.

“We need to eliminate wrong conclusions. We need to make businessmen the operator of the services. It is necessary to involve business working in the education and consulting sectors, and transfer the main budgets and products to the market,” Kairat Mazhibayev said.

Chairman of SME Development Committee Raimbek Batalov suggested focusing work on trade and services, given that the majority of SMEs operate in the trade sector - 26.8 per cent, and the provision of other types of services - 9.1 per cent.

“I propose to take the trade and HoReCa as a pilot, develop a technical project for training programs focusing on three main areas: digitalization and automation of business processes, taxation and legalization of workers, taking into account the industry characteristics of these two segments,” Raimbek Batalov said.

The market participants, training experts and industry experts will elaborate the technical assignment in April. Further it is planned to introduce the developed modules into the learning process as part of non-financial business support programs.

Also an important issue was the inclusion of trade in the list of priority sectors, including for financing by the Damu Fund. According to the results of the program of financial support for SMEs, 53 thousand projects were financed in the amount of 1.9 billion tenge as of January 1.

Raimbek Batalov emphasized that the sphere of trade should be included in the list of priority sectors and subsequently rely on funding in the event of the introduction of business processes’ digitalization. The business is actively working to create conditions for the widespread use of digital technologies.

Director of the Tax Department of the Atameken NCE RK Zhenys Zhanbulatova reported that some recommendations of the SME Development Committee to reduce the shadow economy were reflected in the draft law “On Amendments and Additions to Certain Legislative Acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan on the Development of the Business Environment and Regulating Trade Activities”, which  is now awaiting the signature of the President of Kazakhstan.

Thus, in order to develop the infrastructure for the development of non-cash payments, the draft law provides for an increase in the VAT threshold by 114,184 MCI for those working under the simplified declaration, and the marginal income under the simplified declaration - by 70,048 MCI.

“If the threshold for VAT is about 75 million tenge now, after signing the law, this amount will be about 364 million tenge, provided that the individual entrepreneur according to the simplified declaration of non-cash payments with the mandatory use of a three-component integrated system consisting of a system of accounting for goods, online cash registers and POS terminals. Similarly, in terms of marginal income under the simplified declaration, the amount was increased from 121 million tenge to 298 million tenge,” Zhenis Zhanbulatova said.

Also, the draft law provides for the possibility of reducing the tax burden for individual entrepreneurs applying a special tax regime based on a patent and a simplified declaration when acquiring an online cash register.

“Since 2020 the norm of the Tax Code enters into force, which provides for the exclusion of the right to apply a special tax regime based on a patent for the trade sector. Such entrepreneurs will need to switch to a simplified declaration or another regime,” Zhenys Zhanbulatova said.

According to the chairmen of the Atameken Committees, serious work has been done, however, some of the proposals have not yet been approved by state agencies.

“We have a lot of work to do in terms of bringing the market out of the shadow. For example, today cash registers are used by private business. So far we are not talking about any legalization of turnovers, the incentives that the business has offered are only able to motivate SMEs to get out of the shadows,” Raimbek Batalov concluded.